Feeding my intuition
Working without a plan, feeling your way forward, and making it up as you go – what some people call working “intuitively” – sounds like it would be easy and have you creating your paintings really quickly.
How do I express how a landscape feels if I’ve never been there?
When I paint landscapes, I really want to show people how the landscape FEELS – both as a sensory experience and as an emotional experience…
A magical misty evening walk
Between my blurry vision and the mist diffusing the light, today’s walk was magical! So much inspiration for painting!
How I do my annual creative review + planning
Since committing to my art full-time in 2020, at the end of each year I’ve taken time to look back on the art I’ve made over that past year. I use that to learn more about my creative development, decide the focus for the art I want to be creating next, and get clear on all the ways I want to learn and deepen my art practice in the coming year. Several people have asked me about how I do this, so I thought it worth sharing with you all. So here we go…
Annual review: my favourites out of all the art I made in 2024
Art is so subjective. I love that about art. And I appreciate a wide variety of kinds of art.
And also, as an artist, creating involves constantly practicing discernment. Each next creative move means saying yes to one choice and saying no to everything else I could do.
Annual review: all of the art I completed in 2025
At the end of each year it’s become my practice to print out pages with thumbnails of all of the art I made that year so I can look back on it, and reflect on my practice, my growth, and where I want to go next.
These are all the paintings I completed in 2024. One hundred and five paintings!
Annual Studio Springclean!
In between walks, family time, naps, spring-cleaning the house, and fighting off the flu, I’ve been lining myself up for a good start to 2025 in my studio…
Bringing poetry into in my creative process
I’ve been enjoying exploring poetry in recent months. I love finding poems that resonate deeply or express experiences in ways that move me. And I love it when I find a poem that expresses through words something that I was trying to express through the painting I created, as happened with these collections:
Greeting Cards
I’m producing a limited range of greeting cards locally. Here’s how you can order them…
My Research Into Inks & Watercolours
I’ve been really enjoying the fluidity of inks, but realised I needed to do some methodical research into the capacities and qualities of different inks. Some dull a lot more than others when they dry, for example, which can be quite a disappointment! I wanted to compare brands and see which colours hold their colour best as they dry.
Research into Protective Coatings For Artwork
Cath Duncan Art Copyright 2020
Research into Protective Coatings For Artwork
A final protective coat is so important for the longevity of artworks. There are so many options these days for works on paper, as well as works on canvas, wood, or other surfaces where vulnerable mediums like water-based, chalk-based, mixed media, charcoal, etc have been used.
Choosing your finish is pretty technical … use the wrong one and you may smudge the charcoal or the water-based medium may bleed… a disaster on a piece that was finished and looking beautiful before you applied the protective coat!
The search for a surface that's imperfect, beautiful, ALIVE..
One of my sticking points this past year has been a new-to-me feeling of dissatisfaction with canvas as a surface. I’ve been feeling drawn to surfaces that feel more natural, textured, “imperfect”, absorbent, “alive”, like wood and papers. In comparison, canvas feels manufactured, almost plastic, dead.
